


burning bright, for healing and hope

by lisslynae



Category: Doctor Who, Dr. Who, Torchwood
Genre: F/M, post-Death in Heaven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-10
Updated: 2014-12-10
Packaged: 2018-02-28 22:40:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2749763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisslynae/pseuds/lisslynae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the stars threw down their spears,<br/>And watered heaven with their tears,<br/>Did he smile his work to see?<br/>Did he who made the Lamb make thee?</p>
<p>She has been so broken and battered that if someone is to keep her together they must stay until the ends of the world. Safe, and home, and hope can mend the broken from now through forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	burning bright, for healing and hope

**Author's Note:**

> I have no clue why this came about. Clara feels, I guess. I just find the idea of these two broken souls, that, purposefully or not, the Doctor has hurt, finding solace in one another appealing. The poem can kind of apply so many different ways. I leave it up to you to see, or not see, these characters in Blake's poem. 
> 
>  
> 
> Tiger! Tiger! burning bright  
> In the forests of the night,  
> What immortal hand or eye  
> Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
> 
> In what distant deeps or skies  
> Burnt the fire of thine eyes?  
> On what wings dare he aspire?  
> What the hand dare seize the fire?
> 
> And what shoulder, and what art,  
> Could twist the sinews of thy heart?  
> And when thy heart began to beat,  
> What dread hand? and what dread feet?
> 
> What the hammer? what the chain?  
> In what furnace was thy brain?  
> What the anvil? what dread grasp  
> Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
> 
> When the stars threw down their spears,  
> And watered heaven with their tears,  
> Did he smile his work to see?  
> Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
> 
> Tiger! Tiger! burning bright  
> In the forests of the night,  
> What immortal hand or eye  
> Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

It occurs to her, briefly, that she is mourning wrong. She should be devastated that Danny is gone, Danny is dead. Instead, it is a dull, horrid ache, a mash of emotions she though would fade with the adrenaline. But she stays sorry, and angry, and crushed, and triumphant, and she is not even sure why. Instead, she takes every wisp of emotion and pull it in, wraps it around her heart, and lets it settle like a stone wall or protective casing. No one she worked with was completely surprised to see her go—with Danny dead, and the world almost crumbling around them everyone had reevaluated their priorities.

 

She plans to get drunk, pass out and forget. Instead, she sips her drink, and refills the drink of the man next to her as they chat. She wakes up the next morning pleasantly sore stretched out in his ridiculous bed. She watches him as he sleeps, and he is pleasant, she decides. His eyelashes flutter, and his eyes remind her of something star-like. He should be more hungover, too, given the amount he drank. Instead he swings out of bed casually. His explanation is weak, and fake, and for all she knows, he could be some sort of axe murderer. She showers and eats breakfast with him anyway.

 

Jack is nice. They are both a bit too broken to be boyfriend and girlfriend, or whatever people do. Soon enough though, they both live at her flat, and when someone from his (shady) job visits, they are “partners”, which is beautifully vague. He is some sort of government consultant, and she never explains what, exactly she does. What she does is function as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart’s PA. She trots next to her in heels, scheduling lunch appointments and alien invasions. She likes feeling useful as she explains the inside of Daleks and the origins of Silurians when no one else can. But when she gets home at 5, and Jack stops answering to Captain, and helps make dinner in his socks, and she stops being “Miss” and pulls her hair into a messy bun, and wears one of Jack’s old t-shirts, she can almost pretend she never has to deal with telepathic aliens.

 

Everything, of course, goes straight to hell when Kate has a meeting with a representative from an elusive agency called Torchwood that also has the privilege of dealing with aliens. It takes everything ounce of control she possesses to not make a fool of herself when it is Jack. He visibly jumps when Kate introduces her, but they play professional, with careful words and negotiations. It all well and good enough that they’ve kept secrets, because they never pretended to be something they weren’t, but then the TARDIS is in the living room, and the Doctor is shifting through the mail on the kitchen table with a bewildered sort of look. No introductions turn out to be necessary, and he is kind enough to finally admit to them that Gallifrey remains lost. He barely manages to look sheepish, and neither of them are quite sure why he has come. He makes a strange remark to Clara about her liking for soldiers, and her jaw twitches, but she stands at Jack’s shoulder while the Doctor finishes flipping through their belongings. He has, it turns out, come to see if Clara “wanted a run” as he put it. She does—she called it an addiction, and it is, but she has spent long months now memorizing the lines and curves and the very way Jack breathes, and he might be an addiction too. And she can tell that he is worried that she will leave (too, as others before), and she smiles and shakes her head, and starts the kettle. He wants her, asks her again and again, until Jack’s eyes are hard and his hands tremble. Maybe she is the addiction. 

 

She says no until he acquiesces, angry and sad at once, and the box vanishes from the living room with a hiss and groan. A piece of her heart hurts with the way he was upset, and she would speak, but there are tears on Jack’s face, happy and sad, because the Doctor would barely speak to him, and because Clara stayed. She holds him, wondering why the Doctor would be so cruel, and what was so wrong. She catches a tear with her lips and swirls it on her tongue, and his grief tastes so much older than hers that she folds him to her chest and tucks her face to his hair, breathing in the smell of _safe_ and _home._

 

The Doctor snatches her off the street during her lunch break, with the TARDIS forming around her and whisking off. She is blisteringly angry and he won’t respond to her hard words, just dumps them on a planet until they are, once again, running for their lives. She stops though, when something that shouts _home_ whispers to her, and she wanders off. She thinks for a moment that it is some sort of macabre display, but the face moves, and whispers to her mind (or heart) instead of speaking aloud.

 

_Clara, my Clara._

 

Being anyone’s anything usually frustrates her, but this one she recognizes, and she is on her knees next to the huge glass tank with her hands pressed to it.

 

“Jack.” she gasps, leaning against the tank. She cannot reach him, but tucks every inch of her that she can against the glass. The whispers of his mind wind around hers like a hug, and she reciprocates as she can, stretching her mind in ways she did not think it could. She feels like they ought to say something, but they stay still and quiet, holding each other in silence. Footsteps break their hush, and the Doctor appears in the doorway, his face set against whatever has chased him down the corridor. He sees them there, and his face falls. Clara surges to her feet, her face stone and her eyes fire, and she has the door locked against whatever is stomping its way down the halls before the Doctor can open his mouth. The temptation to hiss angry words floods through her, yanking at her tongue, but instead she presses a kiss to the glass, and follows the Doctor out a window, to the TARDIS, and home, five minutes or so after they left, and Jack is standing feet away, in angry conference with Kate. She leaps from the TARDIS before it fully materializes, and, in a rare spurt of wisdom, the Doctor is off as soon as her feet hit the ground. She runs to Jack, running her hands over his face, and he looks surprised for an instant before grabbing her hands and tucking her against him. Her face is buried in his chest, and the thought strikes again _home_ , as she inhales his cologne and their morning coffee, and the laundry soap he insists is girly. She clenches her fists in his jacket until her hands hurt, but she can feel the wool under her hands, and when she kisses him it is hard and clashing tongues and biting teeth, and she needs to feel him, rough and warm under her hands. Even when she breaks away breathless to face Kate she stays tucked to him, her hand clenched around his coat. 

 

They make dinner in quiet. She is afraid to betray the future, and even more afraid to leave him to it. She never gets further than an arm’s-length from him, and he does not object, angry that she could be snatched, by a friend, from the doorstep of UNIT. They sit next to one another, instead of across, and their knees bump and hands and elbows brush as they eat in heavy silence. When the food is gone and the dishes done, they mean to talk, but he tackles her to the couch. She tosses her head back in ecstatic silent laughter at his warm, heavy weight on her and his hands around her head. He kisses hard and soft, bruising and gentle, and she rakes her hands down his back, and digs her hands into his scalp, bringing him closest and pressing them together until her every sense is drowning in him. They fall asleep there, pressed close so neither will fall off, and she wakes on top of him, head on his chest and hands holding his shoulders. His arms are around her and their legs intertwined as if he fears she could fly away. She forces herself to breathe steadily as she lets the solid warmth of him ground her.

 

“I can’t stop it from happening.” she whispers against his neck, knowing the instant he awakes. “But I can stay until then.”

 

He shifts under her and tenses, and she can feel him fear the blow she could strike.

 

“Until I can’t anymore, Jack.” she promises. “ _You said I was yours.”_ She whispers against the edge of his ear, and she feels him tremble under her hands. He twists so she is pinned to the back of the couch by his firm weight. “ _We went to the ends of the world, and I was yours.”_ she breathes against his mouth, and his hands are strong, running up and down her.

 

“Clara, my Clara.” He rasps, crushing him to her, seeking her eager, willing lips.

 

~~~~~

 

He thinks, maybe, millennia should make him stop mourning, or at least show him that he is mourning wrong. Instead, hope tempers age-old sorrow, because he knows, someday, near the ends of the world, she will come, and he will help her heal, so she can give him hope. He can feel her before she feels him, and she feels like _home_ , and he calls to her, wooing her toward him. She collapses toward him, familiar in an ancient way.

 

“Jack.” she breathes.

 

He wishes, as he has wished for centuries as he thought of this day, that he could touch her. Instead he reaches out the only way he can. _Clara, my Clara._ Her eyes mist with tears, and she presses her body against the glass, and wraps her mind, as best she can, around his, in the beautifully casual intimacy that no one but she could manage. The steps reach his ears before hers, and she will go, he knows, but he also knows where she will go. She is like a Valkyrie when she rises from the floor, and lays a kiss against the glass, and goes, from him and to him in the same instant. Now the world can crumble, he knows as her earth-brown eyes meet his for the last instant.

**Author's Note:**

> Please Review!


End file.
